Read the World Challenge

Objective: Read a book set in each country in the world.

There are many questions to ask yourself when you take on a challenge to read a book set in each country in the world. What countries do you include? What counts as a national author? Can the book include multiple locations? There are many iterations of this challenge and readers have had to set their own guidelines.

I defined a country as belonging to the United Nations as a Member State. There are currently 193. I have tried to only select writers who were born or who have lived for an extended period of time in the country they are depicting. This often means actively looking for translated works. I have tried to select books where the events of the book largely take place in the one country I am reading about. I have not committed to one genre, and actually, I like having a mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. For books outside this scope, namely books that I have read that I find useful, but not written by a national author, I have included a See Also section.

Below is a list of books grouped alphabetically by country or region. You can also find them categorized by geographical location. As a long-time reader, I have read many books set in many different places but I have only included the ones I intentionally read with this challenge in mind. The date I read the book is next to the title.

Algeria

Andorra

Andora is a small European country with a population of about 77,000 people. It's no surprise then that there are not many books written or translated into English. Other participants of this challenge have run into the same issue and the only writer that seems to fit my parameters is Albert Salvadó. I thought about reading his books, but they don't seem to take place in Andorra, which is really what I want to learn about.

So, for now, I've read and included an anthology of stories about Andorra. The authors come from all over the world, but they live in Andorra. This doesn't fit nicely into my self-imposed criteria that the author is from the country they are writing about, but it will have to do for now until an Andorran author comes along.

Antigua and Barbuda

Armenia

It is extremely hard to find translated works by Armenian authors. For that reason, I had to resort to an Armenian-American writer who tells the story of his family after the Armenian genocide in 1915. In the meantime, I have a few hard-to-find translated works that I am on the search for.

Austria

The Bahamas

Bahrain

Belize

Benin

Bhutan

Brunei

Georgia

Hungary

Iran

Lesotho

Malaysia

Northern Ireland (UK)

Sierra Leone

Somalia

Sudan

Tanzania

Trinidad and Tobago

United Kingdom

A majority of what I read comes from the United Kingdom. I have included a small list of books I found especially relevant to UK history and culture.  

United States of America

As an American, a large majority of what I read comes from the United States. I have included a small number of books that I thought would be of interest to readers outside of the U.S. The American experience is wide-ranging and this in no way reflects every aspect of American life, just as one or two books from each country does not wholly depict each country.

Vietnam

Global Stories

I love books that take me all over the world. Usually, there is some reason the author is undertaking a global adventure - whether for work or personal enlightenment. These are some of my favorites.